DesignCrowd, a crowdsourcing company based in Australia that specialises in helping businesses outsource or ‘crowdsource’ design projects, is pleased to announce the launch of DesignCrowd.ca — a new crowdsourcing website for Canadian businesses and designers.

DesignCrowd’s Canada launch is part of its global expansion and comes three months after its launch in the UK (where it was named WIRED Magazine’s UK ‘Startup of the Week’) and shortly after it received $3M of investment from Australian venture capital firm Starfish Ventures in late 2011.

DesignCrowd.ca will offer both international and local crowdsourcing — a feature that allows Canadian businesses to crowdsource designs from Canadian designers. The DesignCrowd.ca service will also allow Canadian businesses to access over 75,000 designers from Canada and around the world and 24 hour support to Canadian businesses during the week.

Alec Lynch, the Australian CEO and Founder of DesignCrowd, said “Canada has over 1 million small businesses and we estimate they spend over $1B on design services every year, but most of this is with traditional design firms who are slow, expensive and risky to use. DesignCrowd.ca offers an alternative and addresses the problems with the traditional design industry by offering crowdsourcing — a process which is faster, cheaper and more creative. Crowdsourcing is already disrupting the US and Australian design industries, and we think it has the same potential in Canada where we hope to pioneer local crowdsourcing via DesignCrowd.ca.”

Canadian designers and business owners have already been using DesignCrowd despite DesignCrowd’s head office being based in Sydney, Australia. Over 1,500 designers from Canada have registered on the site with two Canadian designers featuring in DesignCrowd’s ‘Top 10’.

Last month, Canadian entrepreneur Lorenzo Tartamella, launched a $10,000 logo contest on DesignCrowd to find a logo for his website TimesSquare.com. The design contest has received over 1,800 submissions since its launch. Tartmella said, “For our business, we wanted a more creative approach to logo design compared to that offered by a traditional design agency. I chose DesignCrowd because I wanted an easy launch process, more design ideas, and a contest platform with global reach. Now, I don’t have to worry about getting one idea, I am expecting thousands of ideas from designers all over the world!”

Elisha Leo, a top ranked Canadian designer on DesignCrowd who has already earned $30,000 from the site says, “I travel frequently from Toronto to Indonesia, so it’s not possible to have a permanent job or local clients that require face to face meetings, design follow-ups and print handling. DesignCrowd has helped me to mobilize my work and enables me to travel anywhere I want.”

According to Lynch, “DesignCrowd.ca provides a great opportunity for Canadian designers to earn money, build their portfolios and find clients from around the world. Canadian designers looking for new projects can register with the platform and immediately access hundreds of design jobs launched each day on DesignCrowd,” he said.